How To Maintain Your Floors And Make Them Last Longer

Whether you have carpets, hardwood floors, or laminate flooring, proper maintenance will increase your flooring’s lifespan, saving you time and money. Total flooring replacement can be very expensive, especially if you have woollen carpets or hardwood floors.

The easiest way to save yourself the trouble of having to reinstall your home’s flooring is to look after it. It’s really that simple. Any problems that you do identify should be resolved immediately, to prevent them from spiralling out of control.

This article will offer some useful tips for maintaining your floors and making them last longer:

Keeping Laminate Dry

One of the best pieces of advice we can give to the owners of laminate flooring is to keep your flooring dry. Water exposure can cause laminate flooring myriad issues, from peaking to peeling. Often, water exposure results in homeowners having to reinstall their laminate floors. If the water exposure is bad enough, homeowners have to totally reinstall an entire room’s flooring. In addition, wet laminate floors can also be very dangerous. They are already slippery, then with water added, become much more so. Make sure to thoroughly dry your laminate floors whenever they are exposed to water.

Keep Floors Clean

If you want your flooring to last, whether it’s laminate or hardwood, then you need to keep it clean. Germs, dust, and dirt can cause your flooring’s lifespan to be reduced significantly. This is because germs and dust attract pests, like rodents and woodworm, both of which will make short work of your flooring. Dirty carpets can also attract carpet beetles and moths. When pests are introduced to one’s flooring, if they aren’t eliminated quickly they can rapidly reproduce and become an infestation, which can only be removed by totally replacing one’s flooring.

Vacuuming Your Floor

One way of keeping your floors clean is to vacuum them. With that said, if you have laminate floors, you should never vacuum. Instead, you should brush them. You also need to mop your laminate floors, but make sure that you dry them up properly. You might also want to run a dehumidifier. For other floorings, like hardwood and carpet, regular vacuuming is recommended, though for the latter you mustn’t use a mop in cleaning! Vacuuming can remove pests, germs, and dirt. After you have mopped hardwood floors, make sure to apply a polish. You shouldn’t ever wax or polish laminate floors, however.  

Using Natural Cleaners

If you own hardwood or laminate floors, you should avoid using harmful chemical cleaners like bleach. Chemical cleaners can cause your flooring to wither and lose its vitality. There are lots of recipes available online that you can use to make your own safe floor cleaner. Many of these recipes include the use of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, two natural cleaning agents that when combined are very effective. It is especially important that you do not apply harmful floor cleaners to hardwood floors, because this can cause your wooden floors to deteriorate over time and through frequent exposure.

Right Equipment

When it comes to cleaning your floors, you need to make sure that you use the right equipment for them. Each type of floor has its own special cleaning equipment. If you use devices made for cleaning carpets on a hardwood floor, you might not get the results that you want. Make sure that you do your research online so that you can find the perfect cleaning method for your floors. Finding the right equipment is relatively easy. By using it, you will prolong the lifespan of your floors, preventing wear.

Rearrange Furniture

It’s also recommended to rearrange your furniture periodically, to remove pressure and stress from certain spots in your home. If you leave a heavy item of furniture in one place for several years, when you remove it you will find signs of stress left on the floor. If you rearrange your furniture every few months, however, then you will give your floors time to recover from their exposure to heavy furniture. This will help you to prolong your flooring’s appearance and life, preventing it from deteriorating. Make sure that you carefully move your furniture if you have laminate or hardwood floors because the improper movement can cause scratching.

If scratching does occur, you can apply wax to the areas of the wood that have been affected. You can also find fillers for laminate floors, though if the chips are very deep you may have to totally replace your floor.

Maintaining your floors isn’t difficult at all, as this article clearly demonstrates. There are myriad benefits to maintaining your floors. One of the main benefits is that you will save yourself money and won’t have to replace your floors for a long time.